


A Tragedy in Ages

by CaptainPassion



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Beth Death, Daryl Dixon & Beth Greene Friendship, Gen, Implied Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene, beth greene - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:39:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainPassion/pseuds/CaptainPassion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth Greene may have only lived to be 19 but that didn't mean she didn't live.<br/>A hopefully comforting ficlet for those who love Beth Greene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tragedy in Ages

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from. 
> 
> I'm on team fence/logic/foreshadowing/semi-delusional so This is interesting that I even wrote this to be honest but I was laying here at 4 in the morning and I took some comfort from this.
> 
> This is what I feel like is positive in Beth Greene. A positivity story about her death if thats even possible.
> 
> Its short and whatever and I don't know why I'm posting it but I hope some take comfort from this as well. Beth Greene lives. :)

[ ](http://s1383.photobucket.com/user/jessiborton/media/a%20tragedy%20in%20ages_zpsgppndg3e.jpg.html)

The tragedy in dying young, she supposed, was the loss of so many opportunities. People assume that when someone dies at the ripe age of 19 that they never get to experience things like love and loss and adventure.

But that wasn’t true.

At least not for her.

When Beth Greene turned 17 she had experienced loss. Her world and everyone else’s fell apart as the dead rose from the ground and the world began to spin backwards casting it’s inhabits into a whirlwind of new death instead of life. Her mother and brother were gone and the only thing she had left to cling on to where her father and his words he whispered late at night on the porch underneath the stars and her confusion.  

And when she turned 18 she barely even knew it. Like the world, her life had been spun on its axis and thrown into the air, landing her in the middle of a jail cell with a teething baby that wasn’t her own and a family twice the size of that she was born into and that’s when she experienced love. Love stronger than that forged on a warm summer’s night in the upstairs of a barn sealed with a chapped-lip kiss. She learned love that meant keeping each other alive; love that was deeper than lust or blood.

And when she was 19 she experienced her greatest adventure. No, maybe it wasn’t a tale of heroism and it didn’t have a happy ending. Maybe it wasn’t like the fairytales she read to Judith at night, but it was her own and it was her favorite.

Her adventure started the moment her calves began to burn and her lungs threatened to burst as she ran behind a pair of angel wings into the overgrowth of the forest that surrounded her fallen home.

Daryl Dixon.

If anyone would have told her that Daryl Dixon would be the one walking beside her through her greatest adventure she would have told them they were nuts. But then again, if they would have told her at 17 what the world would turn into she would say the same thing. So maybe it wasn’t such a far reach that the last person she’d think of would be the person who gave her the memories and journey of her own lifetime.

And some people, probably the same people that thought dying so young was such a tragedy, wouldn’t understand how living out in the open with Daryl Dixon would be such a grand adventure but they didn’t get it. No- there was no grand voyage with a tower waiting at the end, but there was more than that because it wasn’t about the ending at all. Not really. It was about what she learned on the journey getting there.

Because she learned how to see and walk and hear, she learned how to light a fire with scraps she picked up along the way a broken down high way and how to piss off an already-angry redneck until his ears burned.

She learned how to laugh and what the taste of moonshine did to her tongue and how it burned down her throat.

She learned what it was like to hold a man together by just using her just her arms and what it was like to soothe long-standing scars with her words.

She learned about herself too.

She learned about her strength and her sense, about how to love in all sorts of ways- and maybe even how to love another in a way she didn’t quite understand.

Beth learned what beauty was and in what forms it was capable of taking. She learned the warmth of a familiar touch on her shoulder and the way it felt to be carried in someone’s arms.

She learned absolute trust in another human being. The kind of trust people much older than her went to their grave not knowing.

She learned about serious piggybacks and taking care of herself and what a redneck brunch tasted like.

She learned bad things too- waking up alone in a strange place. Knowing nothing and fearing everything. And also what it was like to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.

What it was like to hurt those who did.

Maybe her own personal adventure didn’t come with a white wedding at the end or a crown. Maybe she didn’t get to live happily ever after and ride off into the sunset to another tale, but, that was okay.

It was okay because when she was 17 she experienced loss and at 18 she experienced love. At 19 she experienced an adventure so big she didn’t know it until it was gone… She always thought there was a certain amount of power in dying young; the answers to so many unopened questions, knowledge that no one else would know. There was no great tragedy in Beth Greene’s life, though. No answers she needed to tell. She had experienced things some people could only hope to- like loss and love and great adventure.  

Beth Greene maybe only lived for 19 years but…

Beth Greene _lived_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, liking and reviewing.


End file.
